Search for Mountain Lion Seen in Mission Viejo Fails

Authorities went on an unsuccessful mountain lion hunt in Mission Viejo early Monday after two callers said they had seen one.

“A citizen on his way to work called in at about 5:20 a.m. after spotting (a mountain lion) in a flood control channel,” Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Miller said. Shortly after the first call, a resident on Durazno reported seeing an animal in his backyard.

Sheriff’s deputies who went to the scene found nothing and neither did Animal Control officers who arrived a short time later, Animal Control Sgt. Donna Hinkle said.

The initial search was called off shortly before 7 a.m., and another Animal Control officer went out to the scene later to search for any evidence that the mountain lion had been there. A check through the residential area, just west of O’Neill Regional Park, uncovered no tracks or any sign of the animal by 11 a.m.

Residents told officers that they believed the mountain lion had gone into the backyard after wandering in from the foothills via the flood control channel that runs along Jeronimo Road from the park. Last year, Animal Control Lt. Eugene Jalbert recalled, a mountain lion was tranquilized and removed from a nearby Mission Viejo neighborhood. That incident took place on Tree Avenue, a location to the west of Monday’s sightings.

Would Have Used Dart

If officers had discovered a lion this morning, they would have attempted to call in state Department of Fish and Game personnel before taking any action, Jalbert said. If necessary, they would have shot the animal with a tranquilizer dart, but Jalbert noted that “if there was one there, he’s gone now.”

Fish and Game Capt. Rod Shackleford said that the lion probably would have fled back to the wild on its own but that if it were tranquilized, the department would be required to relocate it to a zoo. Transplanting a tranquilized animal back to the wild is against department policy, he said, because of the threat it could appear again and the possibility of liability in case of an attack.

Southern Orange County has been on something of an unofficial mountain lion alert since March 23, when, in an attack that received wide publicity, a 5-year-old El Toro girl was mauled by a mountain lion in Caspers Wilderness Park. The attack was only the second known California mountain lion assault on a human since 1909, according to officials.

Shackleford, who is in charge of wardens in south Orange County, said, “We’ve had probably five times as many reports of sightings since March 23 than we had all last year.”

While Shackleford stressed the rarity of attacks, he said people should “exercise the same caution around a mountain lion that they would around a coyote or a rattlesnake.”

He said the increase in reports of the “cats” in residential areas isn’t because they’re hungry or because there isn’t an abundance of food available in the wild. “The lions aren’t being forced into residential areas, the residential developments are moving into their habitat,” he said.

The state Fish and Game Commission is taking a long-range look at the possibility of allowing some hunting of mountain lions, which has been banned since 1970. Shackleford said there are an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 mountain lions in California.